I'm a day late as I was hauled up at a friend's place yesterday waiting for removal men to collect her stuff and take it off to Dubai, and if I'm honest I was just too tired to bake. I was still recovering from the weekend - I went to London for a hen-do, which involved far too much booze and a very late night.

Anyway, back to the cookies, I used to make batches and batches of these when I was little, but big ones that would run into each other as they baked, creating almost one giant cookie. Admittedly the first half I baked did just this, as I made the portions too big, so tried again and they seemed to work out. These ones (an adapted Martha Stewart recipe) are meant to be soft in the middle and crunchy on the outside, and having eaten one or two (or three) they are just that and brought back nostalgic memories, of climbing onto a chair to check the oven door, which was a little too high for me to reach.

Instructions:Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF and then grease the tray before lining it with greaseproof paper. Then mix the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar together in a bowl until fluffy (pop the butter in the briefly to help it melt) then slowly add the eggs in one by one, beating each one into the mixture before the next and vanilla essence. Then sift in the flour, add the baking soda, and finally spinkle in the chocolate chips. Dollop heaped teaspoons of mixture onto the tray about 2 inches apart and pop in the over for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Et voila!